Senator Lindsey Graham's own words are amateur female masturbation sex videosbeing used against him, thanks to old videos recirculating on Twitter.
Graham is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the cohort of senators who review judicial nominations. In the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, he's facing pressure to reject any nominee chosen by Donald Trump to take Justice Ginsburg's seat. Ginsburg was a progressive on a largely conservative court, and any nominee Trump puts forward is sure to be conservative as well.
In years past, Graham has repeatedly insisted that Supreme Court vacancies should remain vacant during election years so the next president has a chance to fill them. When President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat in 2016, Graham led the opposition against the nomination.
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"I want you to use my words against me," Graham said during a 2016 Senate meeting. "If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."
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In the video, which resurfaced hours after Justice Ginsburg's death was announced, Graham added that he was setting a precedent for future Supreme Court nominations.
"We're setting a precedent here today, Republicans are, that in the last year...that you're not gonna fill a vacant seat of the Supreme Court based on what we're doing here today," Graham continued. "That's gonna be the new rule."
He affirmed his stance in a video posted to Twitter as well, recorded after Graham met with Garland. The video was thoroughly ratio'd following Ginsburg's death.
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Twitter users took the videos as leverage against Graham, who's running for reelection against Democrat Jaime Harrison for his South Carolina Senate seat. Support for Harrison has surged as the election draws closer, with both candidates polling at 48 percent. Many expressed skepticism that Graham would stay true to his word if Trump nominates a replacement for Ginsburg.
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Graham has not publicly commented on the video's resurgence. In a tweet on Saturday, he promised, using shaky justification blaming past Democrat actions, to support Trump "in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg."
Twitter users, though, kept their word.
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